Yotam Orchan

I focus on one fundamental component of animal movement, which is the navigation capacity of the individual, in other words, its ability to navigate to a desired destination in a favored timing.
My model species is Stone curlew (Burhinus oedicnemus), a non-migratory, nocturnal and social bird. We found that this bird is capable of remarkable navigation performance on large spatial scales.
Currently my goals are: (a) To examine the capacity of SCs to perform True Navigation. This includes the quantification of familiar home range size and assessment of homing performance beyond that familiar home range. (b) To elucidate the cues used by stone curlews for homing and to assess their relative importance (if more than a single cue is found). (c) To assess the influence of two internal factors on the homing motivation. (1) How breeding opportunity changes homing motivation? (2) Does True Navigation performance improve with experience?
For the current study I use mini-GPS loggers with solar panels mounted on the birds for long periods. For analysis I compare their local and large-scale movements to a model from the family of random walk models.